Nightlight News

SATURDAY marks a special day. While Nightlight was officially born on a February day in 2003, we have decided to celebrate the Fourth Anniversary of Nightlight on Saturday March 3rd because co-founder Isaac Trogdon (on the left in this photo) is going to be here with John McCusker as Southern Man. He has come all the way from Berlin, his new home, so the least you can do is get off your couch in Carrboro and come visit us.
Is it also your birthday this weekend too? Let us know sucka!

I defer to the explanatory vision of Ryan Martin to alleviate your confusion over the purpose and format of this event.
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This weekend, a special kind of birthday - NIGHTLIGHT celebrates four years of existence, of hanging on by a thread - so many memories, reverberations of truly freaked-out viscerality + ego-slaying, good times -

Won't you please come share this night with us, with a heady mix of live music + dee jays spanning the eras of NL : :

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LIVE we got

::::::::::::::::: SOUTHERN MAN ->-> NL co-founder, former XYC station manager, current ex-pat to Berlin - Isaac's band with John McCusker, a rare treat, don't miss! :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::PYKRETE PERCUSSION UNIT +++ Chuck Johnson's sometimes drone sometimes techno sometimes noise project plus a band (6-8) of percussionists. Living with Chuck was the best because of the sounds pulsing through the walls - ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::BOYZONE re-emergent peace / noise ordeal, chill-out house tribute replete with diva vocals. Now with one married participant, congratulations Galen!!!

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Before between after into the night there will be deep/liberating dancesounds provided by favorites : :

DJ NASTY BOOTS

DJ FAMILY VACATION
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Show starts around 10:30 with a performance by Boyzone.

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So that's the scoop. Expect a general vibe of excitement, awareness, and sexiness brought by reunion, rejuvenation, and nostalgia. You will be so high . . .

(This is a continuation of Friday's post, for the newbies)
There are the pigs that I knew like Estabon, Boris, and Pearl. And then there are the caged, tube fed pigs.

Those pigs, and the people that work for the companies that raise them, are way bad off. Recently Smithfield farms decided that instead of storing their pigs in cages, they will now be in pens. Well, that's good, I guess, that the pigs don't live in cages their whole life, but they still never get to root up the ground ever in their life. Their basic instincts, like the mother pig's innate desire to build a nest before birthing, are denied in favor of concrete floors and "sanitation". In the concrete pen, they are still stressed out, and at least the cages kept the stressed-out pigs getting poked with needles and fed through tubes all the time from biting each other. Pigs don't bite each other in the field. Sure, they fight over tasty grain, which supplements their diet when the acorns aren't dropping, and squeal loudly when a bigger pig takes their spot in the food line. But they are simply establishing a social hierarchy, which is good, natural, pig-like behavior.

In that picture above you are looking at two different things - the buildings where the hogs are housed, and then the gigantic hog-waste lagoon, where the vast quantities of manure that are produced by the thousands of pigs at that Sampson County farm are housed. That lagoon, and the waste housed inside of it, is just one of many lagoons that have been causing problems for North Carolina. Ever since Hurricane Fran swamped the lagoons and sent the waste into the Neuse River, there has been a continuous public outcry and every stakeholder involved is trying to figure out the hog waste problem.

You've got Progress Energy saying they can make electricity by burning hog waste, which I find puzzling only because it seems like burning hog waste would produce two things that are already big problems - greenhouse gases and awful smells. Nevertheless, biomass, which is the oft-used term to describe any biological food source, esp. materials from living or recently living organisms, like plants and animals, is a popular conception of late. North Carolina is being touted as the Saudi Arabia of biomass, which I suppose means the Bushes will be making frequent visits to our shit empire, shmoozing with our Imams of Hog Feces. Or it means every time me and the folx take a day trip to Duplin county so we can play dominoes and go swimming, we are not smelling the offensive offal of porcine detention camps, but rather the richly sick smell of energy and money.

It's not just the piggies that have fucked up lives - the workers in the plant are also screwed. We have in Tar Heel, NC the largest hog processing plant in the entire world, owned by the giant agribusiness monster Smithfield Foods. The largely Latino labor force works long hours, and at that plant in particular, efforts to unionize have been affected negatively by Smithfield's intimidation tactics for some time. On Martin Luther King Holiday of this year, the Smithfield workers walked out. Check out what Nation editor Katrina Vanden Huevel had to say.

The rights of the workers and the pigs they dissect at alarming speeds are in dispute. It doesn't mean I have stopped eating pork products, only that you won't catch me ever knowingly eating any pork product that came from Smithfield. I seek out my pork from local growers. And this year my buddy George is gonna give me a box of produce every week, also known as a CSA (community supported agriculture). A CSA is like a weekly produce subscription, but this year I am lucky enough to be getting pig meat every other week in my fruit and vegetable box - bacon, sausage, pork chops, maybe even some of that shoulder (the source of the most succulent barbeque with that sweet tangy vinegar sauce that I make at fuggin home in the Eastern NC tradition!). YES.

This is not a vegan blog, my friends. Over the next few days I will be writing on the subject of one of my favorite farm animals, alongside the
chicken - THE PIG.

Lots of Pig News this year, since it is now officially the Year of the Pig. (Of course now it is prudent to mention that one of our favorite bands, In the Year of The Pig are playing with Sunburned Hand of the Man and White Mice on March 22nd.) I worked on a pig farm last year, and I grew quite fond of the little critters during my stint as slop slopper, grain slinger, and fence mender. The little ones, who would inevitably turn into big ones, were such good little friends, and good eating too, that I became enamored by the pig. I watched the huge sows give birth in nests that they built themselves in the shade of trees. I really enjoyed seeing the piglets flirt and bolt around little saplings and through the fences that I spent all day erecting in vain attempts to keep the wily, strong animals contained in a single area. (Those above are some of the little guys in their early spring bedding, which helps keep them warm in the field during the chilly March and April mornings).

They are the best farm animal around, rivaling the chicken for all around usefulness and culinary merit. Yes I am not Jewish. And I really feel for that whole religion, for they miss out on the most delicious source of fat and protein. Well, I guess some of the secular non-orthodox Jews get a chance to enjoy.

The pigs root through the soil, turning it and eating rhizomes, herbaceous greens and insects will glee. Their snouts are as efficient as a plow at turning soil, but the farmer is spared the expense of fuel, time, and horse/man power, transferring the labor to the pig who just loves to do the work. The pig does it instinctively and efficiently with its muscular snout and strong neck. Pigs are small farmers' most versatile tool. A small group of pigs turned on a 200ft bed for gleaning can make quick work of the spent vegetable plants, and in the process they either chomp or kill weeds by uprooting them PLUS they poop a whole lot, doing an amazing job of turning plant matter into nutrient rich manure for the fertilization and nitrification of the soil. A 150 pound feeder/finishing pig can drop an average of 9 lbs of manure daily. A sow and a full litter can drop a staggering average of 22 lbs of manure daily. That is so awesome. I am not joking. Pigs can even be trained to wear a harness and pull a small plow or furrow behind them. They are smart and can make good pets. There are many uses for that yeoman's animal of choice, the pig.

Pigs are also interesting compared to many other farm animals because humans, us, are much more likely to eat the whole pig, or at least as many parts as possible. Pickled pig's feet, chitlins, smoked ears, fried skin, blood sausage. They all have their devotees. "It would seem disingenuous to the animal," writes Henderson, "not to make the most of the whole beast: there is a set of delights, textural and flavorsome, which lie beyond the filet." Indeed Mr. Henderson, and there is a bevy of food writers and trendy chefs who haven taken it upon themselves to examine just what it means to own a whole slaughtered hog. On many small farms, getting a pig slaughtered in a USDA approved slaughterhouse for retail sale brings with it a host of difficulties. Transporting the pigs to the slaughterhouse might take a long time. The limitations of the regulations make it difficult to sell smoked or cured meats, because once the pork is vacuum wrapped in plastic and stamped with the USDA seal, its a done deal. If your slaughterhouse doesn't smoke or cure, then you can't go home, open the package, cure the meat, and then sell it in any retail outlet without in the process illegally selling an unapproved, unstamped product. So a lot of small farmers, like the Amish I visited in Washington County, VA, sell the whole hog to a single customer, then slaughter it and sell the individually packaged cuts as a giant order. That's a lot of meat for one family to buy, but you can freeze it and eat it for months, and stay healthy with nice hair, good vitamin/mineral absorption, and strong muscles and organs.

In Vermont they have begun trying to help out the small farmers by proposing to implement state-operated mobile slaughter trucks that actually take the state-approved slaughterhouse to the farmer. In Vermont small farming is as big a deal as it is in Orange/Chatham County NC or Western North Carolina. Slaughterhouses can actually be booked months in advance. The mobile trucks are an extremely interesting alternative to the traditional abattoir. Customers want fresh, locally raised meat from farms they can visit, not from places that employ thousands of employees and treat their animals like plastic commodities.

Update - More mobile abattoir news here.

Tomorrow - PIGS: Part Butt

Charles Gocher, drummer for the deeply influential Sun City Girls, has passed away at 54 after a bout with cancer. The only official word out so far is here on the SCG website. He joined the Bishop brothers, Alan and Richard, in 1980, after their original drummer Kevin Hughes left Phoenix. Interestingly, the original lineup of Bishop Bros/Hughes performed as an all-cover band named Fuck You. Of course, two years later they went on to form the Sun City Girls with Charles Gocher, which, as far as bands go, are as close to representing what Nightlight strives to be and stands for as you can get short of actually living on Mars and playing accordian through your skin. I would attempt to write some kind of massive eulogy, a testament to his work, but other people are doing much better jobs than I ever could. Read Blastitude if you don't already. If you haven't listened to Sun City Girls ever, it's hard to say where to start, but I recommend a) Torch of the Mystics B) 330,003 Crossdressers from Beyond the Rig Veda 3- Carnival Folklore Resurrection Series Vol 7. - Libyan Dream. Also useful for discovering the breadth of sound that can be the Sun City Girls is Fresh Kill of a Cape Hunting Dog/Def in Italy double LP out on Eclipse.

I deeply regret his passing, for many reasons. For one, this means my dream of one day bringing the Sun City Girls as they were is gone. And that just goes to show you - if that awesome band comes around and you stay home cuz you're tired, you might get eternally screwed with that kind of thinking. If opportunity arises to see something awesome and you can enjoy the opportunity at all, take it, cuz life is fleeting and mysterious.

RIP CHARLES GOCHER

If there are hard-ass, academic, discriminating info-nazi readers of this site (real readers not casual passers-by) please be advised. There are a bevy of assertions, opinions, undefended positions, and bold nonsense contained within the Nightlight News. Be warned - you may gain a clue, you might get an idea, but you may not learn the full story about what you learn within until you look for yourself and do some independent investigation.
(To whit, when JJAK HOGAN comes back on March 24th, find out for yourself how fuckin out-of-control hype they are, don't take my word for it.)
There is a resolution to your confusion over the cusp of truth revealed within these lines - get up off yer duff, get out the door and find out about the world for yourself. Stop spending so much time on the computer. Don't rely on the internet to tell you about the world - get up and learn about your surroundings firsthand. And eat something healthy for lunch, for chrissakes.
And of course, if you find it hard to think positively, don't worry, you're not alone. But I'd rather be a cautiously optimistic realist than a flat-out pessimist. Any of that doom'n'gloom about the future can't be good for our insides.

It is just now coming out - and somehow the title of my last post, through some sort of unintended divination, has acted as a day or two early forecast of the unfortunate news that Peanut Butter, that energy packed sticky slime of vegetable oil and legume, is full of salmonella (see right). Not all Peanut Butter, but Peter Pan and Wal-Mart peanut butter. Sez who? The Center for Disease Control, our epidemiological powerhouse of a federal agency devoted to keeping you in bed and not vomiting all night. This is what they say - but the short version is that about 300 people in almost 40 states are sick cuz they either A) bought the generic brand at Wal-Mart, lured by the low price smiley face of violent illness, or B) bought Peter Pan brand name brand peanut butter, lured by the promise of eternal youth, Disney memories, and the chance that Tinkerbell pooped in their jar. (After all, isn't Tinkerbell some kind of endangered tiny songbird species originally used in deep mines to determine air quality, later replaced by canaries?).

Hmmm. I eat that organic natural crap, which is usually awful. The texture and consistency leave something to be desired, although I have found the Harris Teeter brand to be particularly palatable. It's actually creamy, and not so hard to spread, like the all natural grind your own variety that plops so heavily from the grinder at the food co-op. Regardless, try it on a locally made artisan sunflower loaf slice with some kind of fresh-made jam from Pat Bass at the Carrboro Farmer's Market, but get there early cuz her jellies sell out quick. They are sooo good. Dried fruit and honey also make excellent additions to your hippy-dippy enivironmentally friendly, healthy, socially conscious, pro-America PB&J.
Apparently you can tell whether your sorry-ass mass produced peanut butter is afflicted by the stamped numbers on the pb lid. The link in this whole light brown mystery is that both brands are manufactured by ConAgra Foods, who also bring us other highly processed food products with labels such as Orville Reddenbacher, PAM, Slim Jim, and Chef Boyardee. That's quite a roster. And of course, another food contamination scare linked to a massive distribution network of a packaged food product begs again the question - when is our federal government going to get serious about supporting local food systems?
Apparently Secretary of Agriculture Mike Johanns has authored a Farm Bill that would eliminate a large number of federal agriculture subsidies, including eliminating pay-outs to all farmers who adjusted gross-income exceeds $200k. A good first step on the long path towards a radical revisioning of our agriculture system, but questionable in its efficaciousness. After all, if the Farm Bill isn't actually implemented by Congress, then it remains an impotent document. And perhaps a large number of members in the current Congress are still beholden to the large agricultural interests. Our current food system lacks such transparency that even peanut butter scares don't really translate to immediate consumer awareness of the fundamental flaws in industrial agriculture and massively aggregated food production. Even though the basic problems of our subsidy system have been reported on tirelessly, I doubt whether the average burger-eater really gives a fuck.

How did the PB get contaminated? That would be hard to say, especially since salmonella begins in the feces of animals, mostly birds (like Tinkerbell, above left). However, at the factory, the nuts used in the peanut butter are heated to a salmonella killing 165 degrees before they get ground to a paste along with the myriad other ingredients and then squirted into a jar. These processes occur at very high speeds, and there are really only a couple of minutes between when the peanuts get heated and then they are squirted into jars and capped, sealing out contaminated shit particles. Even though the peanut butter is racing around that factory faster than chickens can run, a lot of things happen between the heat step and the jarring, so it's hard to pinpoint the contamination.
Are you a Great Value/Peter Pan consumer? Wondering whether your jar is contaminated? If the product code on your lid starts with 2111, you can get your money back by mailing your lid to ConAgra. Remember - 2111=violent illness.

We're in for some timez y'all, signs are all over ya know - the spectres of nuclear war or a world of either really fat or really hungry (or both) people or another president Clinton for a grand total of zero new presidential last names since 1997 - what kinda fool do they think I am? It aint fair I tells ya! I'm trying just to make mine really real in Chapel Hill! What do I mean? I mean I wanna let you know that Nightlight isn't just some freak's outlet for outsider fashion sense and intimate indiscretion. We've got some subtle and not-so-subtle vibes that aren't just the ghosts - it's that corner of your brain when you walk in the door (which is new - no more metal bar, no more slammin) that says ah yes, it will be allright if I just let go of that nagging feeling that keeps me from showing the world there is more to me than a shoeshine and a snappy haircut. We've all got a little bit of art and a lot of love to give, and sometimes it takes a little freak and a little beer to let it all come pouring out in orgiastic glory. Why all this soppy tirade of sincere/goofy manifesto? - cuz we got a party comin up and I want you to come freak it with me. Come dance on Saturday and show some love to the Nightlight haunts. And show the world there's a part of each of us that uses dancin and freakin and makin out as a way to say I'm fed up and I ain't gonna take it anymore - its a different kind of activism where the signs come from inside our bones and ooze from our chest like a gooey sluice of sexual orientation being drawn through a sieve of collective butt movements too scandalous for Elvis.
WHAT IT IS - VALENTINES DANCe SATURDAY FEBRUARY 17th AT NIGHTLIGHT w/ DJS MISTY TOUCH-NASTYBOOTS-BRIAN LASER

Not quite a food news item, but certainly one of agricultural importance.
It seems farmers in North Dakota, perhaps the most inhospitable state in the Union, are trying their damndest to get licensed to grow industrial hemp. There's a wealth of information about industrial hemp on the web, you can really blow off productive hours in the "office" researching the subject. Perhaps these Great Plains farmers have been researching hemp from the cabs of their gigantic sprayers, because some of them are ready and rarin to go. They have to get approval from the DEA first, though - good luck farmers. If they can pull it off, we might see the spark of an agricultural upheaval in this country as we can finally put our land to some productive use besides growing the ingredients for Doritos. I say to thee - Harness the all-mighty and incredible diversity of applications that hemp can be put towards, from seed oils to fibers, and of course gigantic spaceship sized joints that barely get you high which is why the whole DEA argument seems like such a ridiculous mind-fuck.
Hemp, as the picture to the above left shows, must be grown in tight packs in order to maximize the seed-producing potential of the plant, whereas marijuana is ideally grown with maximum space available to encourage the largest buds. Of course there is disinformation on all sides of this issue, and air-tight arguments in favor of industrial hemp production always get holes poked in them by folks with "scientific" research that is most likely funded through the same disreputable channels that spent so much money on the brain-egg metaphor.
The information sworl of dis-info and questionable research surrounding industrial hemp is not surprising given we are at least tangentially also discussing psycho-active drugs, which always inspire the ire and attention of law-makers, law-enforcers, and law-lovers. But, you would think that the agricultural traditions of this great land of lands - our Jeffersonian heritage as a great bastion for farmers and the Washington/Jefferson understanding of hemp's infinite usefulness - would at least bring some red-white-blue tears to the eyes of the most stalwart Patriots considering the allowance of growing ganja's cousin. We would be helping solve oh-so-many problems in the process. But alas, fear of the schedule 1 controlled substance may be enough to block even the efforts of North Dakota's finest agricultural entrepreneurs.
North Dakota is such a wasteland, there is barely any value to the land as residential property. (So Dakotans might feel offense at my stark indictment of their state, but I think the temperatures and declining population figures suggest that North Dakota is pretty dark and lonely - the deaths outnumber the births, people are moving away.) Some land use and economic development planners actually argue that the best way to deal with North Dakota would be to round up all the land and make it into a Buffalo Commons, That term, buffalo commons, was actually coined by a couple of East Coast intellectuals, but despite that potentially searing origin, the idea has really caught on. It appeals to the need to conserve land and it invokes some pretty deep sentiments about the West, America, and old nickels. Sort of a reactionary reversal to the way it used to be, back in the days of railroads, cowboys, indians, and harlots, but equally a deep, meaningful preface to an acceptance of the potential post-apocalyptic abandonment of sparse regions where wind and animals roll, and humans come to visit, marvel, hunt, and leave. There are some areas of the Great Plains where the population density is less than 2 persons per square mile. For a comparison, in our very own Orange County, North Carolina there are around 300 people per square mile, and parts of this county are downright rural.
If the Buffalo Commons project were to be pulled off, our Great Plains would revert to large contiguous tracks of native grasslands where native mammals like bison and prarie dogs would be free to live. Apparently, Ted Turner already owns a bunch of land devoted to this purpose, and bison populations are taking off. I think of it as a progressive method of adjusting land uses in the face of very real geographic change, change from needless commodity mono-cropping on massive tracts of land, crops we have to force down people's throats in highly processed forms like partially hydrogenated soybean oil and high fructose corn syrup. Change instead to things we can actually use - like industrial hemp byproducts (truly a crop well suited for value-added processes that enrich local economies) and land for habitat (which is appealing both to folks who like to look at nature and to people who value its existence even though they never really see it). What I can't wait for is the day I get to ride on the back of a bison through a giant field of organic hemp wearing nothing but a loincloth made of hemp fibers and bison fur. Doesn't that sound like the kind of American dream we could get behind?

It's been a while since last postage, and for the diligent readers, I apologize. I have begged/pleaded with the Nightlight core for more postage, but Chizlie is still the primary author. Retaining this role, but in a slump, I couldn't muster a news item for many days. Couch crashing and Doldrums have left me craving something, something I don't know. Thankfully, there are ample distractions. Friday Night's Greenspace Collective party was packed and randy, kinda reminded me of the old days when I held down the tops of the Pritchard shack. Sammy and Michal were most gracious hosts and allowed my inebriated self to crash in a tiny corner of the top flo'.
Coming up on Monday the 12th is COSTES / Jason Crumer w/Buddy Ship / Clang Quartet / Mr. Natural, which is probably going to be the most blasphemous and scary thing you have ever seen. Costes is coming from France, and I just found out from a Frenchman with the same last name that Costes is pronounced like cost, whadya know? The Nightlight Valentines Dance is next Saturday, and we've got a stellar crew of DJs that night - DJ Nasty Boots, DJ Misty Touch, and DJ Brian Laser (aka MTV Spring Break) - this is a SCORCHER. And it's been a good long while since we had an old-fashioned cheap-to-get-in rager - Don't miss out!!!! Seriously. All in all there are some weird times afoot, weird news like this whole astronaut business. Little spots of hope creep up here and there, and our March/April calendars are so bangin and packed with good shit that everything is going to wind upward into a vortex of excitement. There will be something for everyone, And I am definitely looking forward to telling you all about it. I've got some interesting research to share, so check back in this week to see and hear more about these crazy times. (and sorry about this weird font issue, I am still trying to figure it out . . .)